'It’s sad and shameful that so many fail to recognise the necessity and the right of sex workers to protect their community.' Photograph: AP

It was 2008 when allegations of deception and predatory behaviour began to surface in connection with the name Alexa Di Carlo, an internet personality who launched The Real Princess Diaries at the start of the same year. Di Carlo claimed to be an incredibly high-charging sex worker studying human sexuality in the graduate department at San Francisco state university. In spite of her status as a self-professed newbie in the escort world, she positioned herself as an expert on sex worker etiquette and sexual techniques.

Her aggressively cheerful self-promotion, coupled with her predilection for only describing sex in the most explicit porn slang, quickly brought her a fair amount of attention in the blogosphere. Much of it, however, was quietly sceptical. Many sex workers and otherwise sex-savvy folks, from writer Susie Bright to exotic dancers, recognised Alexa as fake.

The inconsistencies in Di Carlo's circumstances were obvious: she was a tireless presence online, with multiple blogs and a constantly updated Twitter feed, yet she allegedly worked frequently as an escort and satisfied the requirements of her graduate course load. She was located on the west coast but tweeted as early as 7am east-coast time. Her escorting stories were light on convincing detail.

None of this fakery mattered much until the Di Carlo persona began to gain traction and was promoted by others, some of whom had credentials. She then assigned herself the mantle of "activist" even though she'd never met or even corresponded much with the country's most prominent and respected advocates: she refused to meet any fellow working girl in person or speak on the phone.

I wrote about Alexa at the end of 2009, prompted in part by discussions with sex workers who were tired of Alexa's nymphomaniacal and largely clueless persona, which they felt was misrepresenting escort work to a public thirsty for salacious stories. In the discussion that ensued, The Real Princess Diaries went briefly offline but later resumed in its usual fashion. After one blogger declared Alexa Di Carlo the "top sex blogger of 2010," the debate reignited and Expose a Bro, a site presenting alleged evidence that Alexa Di Carlo is the creation of a middle-aged man, was born.

If Expose a Bro is to be believed, the man behind Alexa lived an earlier fantasy life as "Caitlain," a 22-year-old stripper, sexually active since "early adolescence" who was qualified to dispense advice to teenagers simply by virtue of "her" own experience. Several people have since come forward to say that Alexa/Caitlain solicited nude pictures of them while they were still underage, and while they trusted "her" as a peer.

Much of the lingering outrage over the Alexa hoax now focuses, understandably, on this aspect of teen exploitation. It's also easy for casual observers to understand why academics and sex educators are angry with Di Carlo, since their professional reputations can be tainted by irresponsible and unethical stunts like this.

But there's greater reticence to give the same credence to sex workers who articulated concerns about Di Carlo. As a population who uses false names and fantastical personas to attract clients and maintain their anonymity, sex workers have been accused of hypocrisy or of acting purely out of jealousy when criticising Alexa. Some have intimated that unveiling Alexa as a fraud necessarily puts authentic sex workers at risk of being outed. The implication is that, had it not been for the aspect of underage solicitation, whoever was behind Alexa should have been allowed to continue their innocent fiction unchecked.

There was nothing innocent, however, about Di Carlo's careless co-opting of the voice and experiences of a marginalised population, one who actually has to live with the collection of stereotypes she perpetuated. Sex workers already live under threat of outing and will continue to do so until their profession is de-stigmatised. Revealing Alexa Di Carlo, Shirley Shave, JT Leroy, or other frauds doesn't create that unfortunate situation. Nor did Alexa's presence contribute to de-stigmatisation. Arguably, it furthered misunderstanding by injecting a very loud, entirely fabricated sex worker narrative into the public conscious. It's incredibly insulting to sex workers and activists to suggest they need fake sex worker stories to further their cause.

It's sad and shameful that so many fail to recognise the necessity and the right of sex workers to protect their community. This type of fakery radar is what keeps them safe, and it's the best form of protection they have in the US, where their work is illegal and the police are often abusive. Sex workers are the authority on their own lives, and we need to listen to them when they speak, especially when they tell us that we're getting their reality wrong.

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